Amelia

---

Amelia's grin started to lower a bit as Lynn met her gaze with what definitely seemed to be confusion and more confusion. Amelia cleared her throat before breaking the gaze, looking back down at the floor. Oh shit oh fuck oh fuck I was talking too much wasn't I? Amelia was trying to bond with exploits of her own shenanigans. Unfortunately, Amelia was only just starting to realize now that what Lynn and Amelia referred to as 'causing trouble' was on a bit of a different scale. Amelia's trouble-making had been an effort to lash out at authority, and seize some control for herself. And now Amelia was starting to see that Lynn probably caused trouble as some sort of survival mechanism. Amelia suspected she must have felt a bond with Lynn because up here she had a suspicioun they could be one and the same.

Amelia glanced back up at Lynn and her neutral tone, giving a bit of a shy smile back. "Yeah, well....everyone's got something lucky they hold onto, right?" Amelia tucked back an errant strand of hair, desperately trying to come up with a topic that would get them off this particularly awkward silence. Unfortunately she was turning up nothing. Glancing around the loading bay, Amelia raised an eyebrow as she saw Eli and Keaton walking by. Amelia gave them a noncommittal wave, but didn't make an effort to follow or invite them over. Amelia could guess why they were here. They were part of the love bombing squad that Amelia expressed such disdain over. Amelia would have no part of that. Not under any circumstances.

Amelia broke back into a smirk at Lynn's last comment.

"Do we get to haze the new fish at all? Maybe that break dancing bastard will come kick somebody again."

"Oh please, god, anything." Amelia replied. "Whatever breaks up this cultist brainwashing crap." Amelia rubbed her forehead, getting a headache at the mere thought. She kept her voice low as she said this, not wanting to draw attention to the two of them. "You know this is how they do it, right? Cults? They treat you like shit and dehumanize you to your breaking point before on a dime suddenly treating you like family. Cults. Sororities. And apparently here too." Amelia closed her eyes with a smirk. "So yeah. Starting trouble sounds good to me."

Archie

---

"Hey, Archie. I'm....I'm sorry. Taking a break was a mistake and I'm sorry if it hurt you. I don't think it even fixed anything or made anything better. I just didn't want to burden you."

"And can we, like, I dunno. Carry on? Like, as boyfriend and girlfriend? I'd like that."

At that Archie suddenly became more articulate than ever, "I, um, it – uh, you, I, um, er, uh, well… um, what?"

Somewhere behind him, someone dropped a platter of food.

Despite the conversation at hand, the sudden noise had startled him. A part of him was grateful for the distraction, because it meant that he could channel all of that nervous energy that was now building inside him into something that was more socially appropriate than a heart monitor going off. God, whenever it started beeping he felt like one of the occupants of the nursing home.

"Shoot, let me help you."

He slid out of the chair easily, shifting his attention quickly from the hard task of sorting through how he felt to the easy task of helping the waitress collect the empty plastic cups that had rolled his way. This was certainly a surprise, and not at all the conversation that he was expecting. But at the same time, what exactly HAD he been expecting here? She had wanted to see him, and she hadn't seen him in a while so it wasn't exactly unreasonable to assume that she'd hit him with something heavy like this but he just hadn't thought that she would ask him to be an official relationship after going several weeks without seeing him. And for what, so he wouldn't see her in a rough way? So she wouldn't burden her? Since when did she get to decide what did and didn't burden him?

It stunk, and he wasn't sure how to take it.

He collected the last of the three cups that had come his way and passed them to the apologetic but thankful waitress. He sighed, but wasn't sure what to make of the situation. He wanted to say yes, but after just... not talking to her for so long he wasn't sure if he wanted that yet. He had seen first hand what happened when two people who cared about one another just chose not to communicate with one another. He sighed and took his seat next to her again. Archie focused on the counter for a long moment, trying to decide how he wanted to respond.

"I'm... not sure that's a good idea right now." Archie said finally, giving Natalie an apologetic look. "It's not that I don't like you, or want, well, that." he explained. His shoulders bobbed with his words, and his hand reached out to rest on Natalie's. "I'm not like, opposed to it, just, for not seeing someone in a few weeks it doesn't seem right." He hated doing this, because it felt like he was letting her down in some way. She very obviously wanted to BE with him, and he did too but he just couldn't commit to that when Natalie's reasons were a lack of trust in him. He understood her fear for the future and for how dangerous The Promise was turning out to be, but he'd rather have someone that trusted him to have their back than someone who couldn't trust anyone at all in that sense.

"I accept the apology, and I'd like that too but-" he said, grasping for words metaphorically, "I think we should see each other more before becoming boyfriend and girlfriend. I've lost a few too many people for a fair-weather relationship." His phone buzzed, and he slipped it out of his pocket to check the message. Another alert, just a reminder that the pods would be arriving in the next hour or so. They'd have to go soonish. He'd have to let Eli know that he'd be on his way soon. He cast his eyes up to Nat and gave her a lopsided smile. "I hope that's okay. I still want to see where this goes. Whatever this is."

---

Pulling her jacket against herself, Keaton hustled towards the loading bay, idling by the entrance to check her phone. While there’d been no word from Lynn, Eli had texted back, and Keaton was partial to waiting outside for a minute, watching people move about the loading bay. For so many, Homecoming had been exactly as advertised: A night of fun and drinks and letting loose. People loved talking about it, loved being asked how they spent the night, what sort of conquests or risks they took, but even though Keaton knew that, she still struggled with working the question into her usual repertoire for casual conversation. The tricky thing was that asking usually meant being asked in turn, and for Keaton, that meant she needed to decide between telling the unfortunate truth, twisting it, or lying. After some trial and error, though, she found that focusing on the drinking and beer pong turned out to be a better bet, considering that any mention of the campground usually resulted in questions about people hearing gunshots in the woods. Answering anything like that honestly wasn’t an option, and in the game of choosing to lie first or being forced to lie later, Keaton figured a preemptive choice was better for everyone involved.

Eli entered then, and Keaton waved, watching her approach with chips. When offered, she took, popping and crunching happily despite having just eaten lunch. For some reason—the salt, probably, definitely—there never seemed to be a wrong time for chips.

“Totally. I love being cold,” she said, cracking a smile. “And, well, the cafeteria’s cheap and has yet to kill me, so odds are I’m going to keep going.”

At Eli’s mention of Lynn and Amelia, Keaton traced her gaze, somewhat surprised she’d missed the duo herself. Lynn’s hair was usually a dead giveaway, often being nowhere near normal in color, and Amelia wasn’t exactly hiding in her black leather jacket. But, sure enough, there they were, engrossed in conversation. Lynn looked over, and Amelia waved, cueing either a greeting or feigned ignorance that bordered on rude, and the latter wasn’t much Keaton’s style.

“No idea. Let’s ask,” Keaton said, walking towards the two. Their conversation didn’t look all that deep—wasn’t all that deep, considering where they were. Amelia volunteering her power and being the hero of the day had marked her a viable ally, in Keaton’s book, and she was glad that Lynn was getting along with the girl. Where Eli was an easy friend for Keaton, Amelia wasn’t, so Lynn being able to befriend her was good news. Of course, whether they’d even need Eli and Amelia’s help anytime soon was questionable, but keeping their options open was good.

“Hey, gossiping about us?” she asked, looking between the two with a grin. “What brings you two to the loading bay? And, uh, Lynn, check your phone any less and I’ll have to buy you a new one.”

Terror in Dublin

Three indelible days have passed as the unthinkable became routine in Dublin. In the wake of the St. Patrick's Hospital a city wide man hunt seized Dublin residents by their hearts. An effort made by thousands united to find the attacker seemed a monumental task -- civilians submitting tips, law enforcement, and NBCI -- but they did it.

The Patient
Attending the National College of Art and Design, Icelandic ex-pat 'Kas' Grímsdóttir was a model student; Banksky Graffiti Art Competition finalist, Landscape Artist of the year nominee twice in the last three years, and gallery exhibitor. Extracurricularly they competed in the Irish Open seven years running, placing in the Grand Champions Division in the recent most year. It was there a fateful conclusion to their meteoric rise through the rankings came to a sudden halt, having broken their leg in the second match of the day. It was then they were brought to St. Patrick's.

Admitted at 5pm Thursday evening, the purple-haired warrior artist was sent to surgery and expected to make an overnight stay to recover. In a series of unfortunate events, Grímsdóttir joined the recent outbreak of staph infections at St. Patrick's. An overnight stay turned to a week. A week to two. Complications compounded until their heart took all it could take and gave out.

Misdiagnosis
Grímsdóttir, like all others born in the past few decades, had been tested for potential genetic sequencing known to produce parahumans at birth and was found to have at risk signs for the disorder. Nearly two decades on from diagnosis, it was deemed a false flag. They yet to show any signs of parahuman ability. The genome that placed them at risk had seemingly been a miss-pairing or incapable of activation. Thus Grímsdóttir was allowed a level of freedom ill-afforded to their activated counterparts; Monitored, but unrestricted travel, a cessation of mandatory testings, no longer having to register their parahuman status. They were free to live normally, just as their peers.

In the weeks following their injury at the Irish Open, their past parahuman status had only been a footnote on their medical records. Had they known what we now known, this footnote would have better served as the single most critical status of Grímsdóttir. As it would soon turn out, the rising artist was in fact a parahuman. James McKinley, a veteran nurse of St. Patricks, was the first on the scene when complications arose for Grímsdóttir. The parahuman had contracted a staph infection which led to further infection and shortly after McKinley's arrival, cardiac arrest. The tragedy of circumstance struck.

The Incident
CCTV footage has Grímsdóttir leaving the scene in a stumbling daze shortly after an explosion rocked the east ward. At the same time, other nurses had arrived to the singed room to find McKinley in a state of shock, over sixty percent of his body covered in burns of the second and third degree. Priorities shifted from finding the source of the explosion and the now missing patient to seeing to the burned nurse. During this time Grímsdóttir had escaped the hospital. McKinley has since been treated for his wounds and is expected to make a recovery in the coming months following extensive physical therapy.

As fellow Dubliners are well aware, the following days were tense as the situation developed and it was quickly learned who the perpetrator was. From freak accident, to terrorist attack, to parahuman attack, and finally to a series of unfortunate events. ^{CONT. PAGE 6.}

- Connor Ryan, The Irish Times

Gunsmoke filled the parahuman's nostrils, gagging them. "Fokk," they spat around the metal clenched between their teeth. "Fokk!" they tried once more, screaming it, beating their free hand against their lifeless leg. This was, what? The third time? Forth? It had only been hours since they escaped the hospital that some guard thought it better to shoot them than arrest them. Kas supposed they should thank the guard. He'd shot Kas, sure. But he'd also gotten close enough that whatever it was that happened when they die was able to singe them and afford Kas a good chance to get their own firearm. They'd never used one, but they were quick learners and eager to have something to keep them safe. They knew what happened to parahumans. Especially the dangerous ones, Kas grimly reminded themselves. The second time some intrepid driver had thought it swell to try and stop the 'dangerous' criminal by running over them with a car. Kas was at three burn victims, a totaled hospital room, a burnt out car, a stolen gun, and... probably terrorism at this point? Sure, to the list with you, they resigned.

So here they were at time number... three. It had to be three. Or four. Did the hospital one count? Nah, too boring. They'd been shot again. For the sake of all things holy and unholy, why couldn't they just... SAY SOMETHING FIRST? Right, back to suicide. Kas clenched their teeth around the barrel of the knicked gun and clenched their eyes as tightly as they could. So far it seemed like dying was a panacea for every poison. The bullet that clipped their spine and left their bottom-half numb by that logic should also get fixed. So then... why was pulling the trigger so-

Fuck it.

A gunshot rang out, drowned out an instant later by the sudden roar of concussive force and the hiss of heat that steamed the humid air around the hiding Kas. Kas woke up long enough to see silhouettes in a vignette of black and white before everything went dark. It hadn't worked like before. Why hadn't it worked like before?!

---

Kas's stomach woke them up. The sensation of gravity or, rather, the lack thereof had been enough to send their starving body into a frenzy for something. Really anything so long as it was edible. Their memories of the events following their paralysis were hazy and Kas took the chance of nauseating weightlessness to sort things out before even daring to open their eyes.

Gun. Mouth. Right, those two check out. I followed through, didn't I? Their body clenched and their toes squirmed. Well, someone followed through if I didn't. Great. What next. Shapes. Voices. Something about... No. No! Kas's eyes shot open. They were strapped in to a standing seat, their limbs restrained to their chest and legs bound together at the heels. Looking down, Kas looked thinner than they remembered. None of their clothes had ever hung on them this loosely. It's not like they'd been on the husky side or anything but... They used to have some meat to them. Around them were some several dozen seats, sparsely populated with others Kas could only assume were like them. Then... the weightlessness they'd been feeling since they came to meant that-

"ETA: Ten minutes," a voice barked over the radio.

Fokk.

Natalie Ellis

---

---

Natalie was glad that she'd finally got it all off her chest for a about a second, before the regret seeped in. She wasn't used to talking to people anymore. And even when she was somewhat used to it, she had been awful at it. She just said everything she felt. Everything she hoped. Tact, or the ability to dress something that you wanted to say up, where no longer skills Natalie possessed.

He had gone to help somebody with a dropped plate of food. She was thankful for this. She'd have a little time to try to calm down. All this time baming her inability to live a normal life on Arianna, or Project Lion. Maybe it was her. Maybe everything would have been fine if she had let Archie see the ugly sides of her, and relied upon him to carry her through this all by himself. Maybe it was her choices and decisions that were stopping her from living the life she wanted. Was it even the life she wanted? Yes. That's one thing she was sure of. But at the same time it scared her. She wasn't ready for it. And she definitely didn't think she deserved it.

She was resting her head in her hand, staring down at the table when she came back, and looked up at him. From this close, with this comparatively little makeup, and in this mood, it was actually properly noticeable for the first time how deep the bags under her eyes were, and how tired she looked. This wasn't fatigue. It was something deeper. You don't get those eyes from a few nights of poor sleep. Those eyes take years to get.

She listened to him silently. Looking away more often than not. Those weren't words she was surprised or shocked to hear., but neither were they what she was hoping for. But after he finished, she smiled, and her eyes brightened a little, which surprised even herself. The hard part of the reunion that she had literally made herself suck worrying about was over and it hadn't upset her enough that she'd cried in public though it had come close. Result.

"Thanks, Archie. I just had to get that out, and I'm glad it didn't mess things up too much....I'm not good at this. And I'm sick of being scared. After this assembly thing, I promise I'll tell you about myself. I owe it to you and maybe just telling somebody might help me. Yeah, we should be friends first. I'm not used to having them, either, so I should at least try and get that right first. Thanks for being patient with me."

---

Eli turned her head back towards the odd pair, and as if Amelia heard her speak of them she saw her look back. Amelia's halfhearted wave wasn't any concern, but Eli did feel a guilty twinge at the back of her throat as she saw the girl turn back to Lynn. She still hadn't thanked Amelia for that night. It was owed to her, and Eli regretted that she hadn't done it sooner. She still felt odd about the way she treated her at the party. They'd just met and she was already asking the girl for favors. Amelia obviously didn't want to get involved with Arianna, but somehow Eli was glad that she went along with it. Radvi wouldn't have made it if Amelia wasn't there.

"No idea. Let's ask."

Eli looked at Keaton and suddenly felt comforted by her friend's nonchalance. She followed after her at a comfortable pace. Keaton greeted them first, which Eli was grateful for. The comment broke the ice as soon as they approached. At least that's how Eli felt. The tension in her shoulders faded. She wasn't even sure why she felt tense. Something in the air. Or maybe it was the growing crowd. Either way, she relaxed in the present company and looked at the girls with an amiable smile. She spoke to Amelia with a feeling that it was better to first greet the person she knew the least. "Hey, Amelia."

She moved to stand by Lynn and gave her a friendly nudge in the shoulder. Keaton called Lynn out and Eli grinned before moving on. "I thought you weren't the chummy welcoming party type. Have you had a change of heart?" While she knew that wasn't the case, she was still genuinely curious to know why Lynn would come to such an occasion. A little part of her almost wanted to be surprised that Lynn had come here with good intentions.

Out of the corner of her eye, Eli spotted another familiar face. Did she suddenly have the eyes of a hawk, or was it just super easy to spot a girl with fire for hair or a huge bobble head of a robot? There he stood, Freaky-D. At first, Eli moved as if she wanted to walk straight over to him, but she thought of Trevor's words and decided not to approach him at the moment. He was undercover, so to speak. She certainly didn't want to cause any trouble, but she was itching to speak with him. She had many questions for him. She'd save them for later.

Archie

---

Archie nodded, but didn't look away from what was left of his fries at Natalie's promise to tell him more. Although, the edge of his lips quirked up just a little. He hummed gently, and payed with his student ID. "We should go soon. Cara will probably be annoying us." he explained as he slid out of his seat and allowed one of his hands to fall onto her shoulder in comfort. "Lets get going. I'm sure they'd be happy to have people help setup."

---

Nothing prepares a person for a rocket launch.

Sure, there can be special training programs one can undergo to try to condition their bodies to withstand the forces they are subject to. Special machines meant to simulate the acceleration, or sudden lurch of the all powerful engines roaring to life. But at the end of the day nothing can perfectly match what it is like for a person, mentally. All someone knows, all they've ever known had been right on the pale blue dot called earth. To agree to take a journey to the stars meant not only that they were putting their lives on the line, but also that they were leaving everything they had ever experience behind for something new and exciting and strange.

The launch is like the world's greatest roller coaster, the suspense and buildup feeling distant but immediate all the same. The feeling of your body being pressed into your seat immediately overwhelming one's thoughts of home and family and familiarity as the heart beats twice its normal rate to try to pump blood to the brain in an attempt to you conscious. Some aren't able to stay up for the whole flight, usually the less conditioned and less fit end up blacking out. Those that do are rewarded with a feeling of weightlessness when the engines finally cut. The launch itself had been daunting, minutes passing by like they were both hours and seconds at the same time- but the float? The float feels like forever.

To see the planet one once called home shrinking outside is a distinctly minimizing feeling. It had only been five minutes, but now one is further from home than they ever had been in their lives.

Then there's the sudden jerk when the launch pods are captured, the acceleration and artificial gravity forcing one back into their seats and throwing them forwards at the same time. Suddenly you're spinning, and the earth and stars are gone, and there are flashing lights, and one's mind is almost certainly screaming they you're going to die before you could do anything truly meaningful. That the screeching of brakes doesn't sound right. Part of one's mind does ask if this is it.

But it isn't, one realizes when they see the smiling faces of their peers, when they feel the overwhelming desire to relieve themselves... that this is just the beginning.

Of the end.

The doors haven't opened yet, but the sound of celebration outside pierces even the thick metal hull of the launch pod. The Silent Court sets to work, the strongest of the group assisting the others with righting themselves on their shaky legs and arming them. Taking the launch pod had been relatively simple, they had come quickly, by surprise, and with overwhelming force. They hadn't the people to hold the fort down for long, but just long enough to sever communications and to launch the pod. Those that one had spent so much time with likely laid down their lives for the success of goal. Now that responsibility fell on everyone aboard launch pod three. Words were so treasured to them, having been repressed so much by their neighbors and their leaders in an effort to make the problems appear nonexistent, or at least better than they seemed. So when the eldest member- an older man spoke, everyone listened.

"Today we must scream."

The court gathered their armaments, large machine guns with high magazine capacities and large destructive ammunition. When the doors finally opened, a woman stepped through. She was smiling, but the excitement died in her eyes as the realization of what they were dawned upon her. These were no students. She had barely been able to scream when she was peppered with impossibly loud gunfire. Her body contorting in the dance of death as it reacted to the force of bullets tearing through her. She fell unceremoniously, dead before she hit the floor, but the tip of the spear wasted no time. They marched forwards, stepping over or on her body as The Silent Court began fulfilling their last and greatest journey with red hot lead and fury. Brass, bullets, and blood filled the launch bay.

Today, they hid no longer.

Today, they roared.

---

Archie's had felt like something was wrong before the doors had even opened. He couldn't place his finger on it, but his mind kept thinking back to when he was captured. He could smell the gunpowder and adrenaline in the people around him then. Despite being literally a planet away from that he kept thinking back to it. When the doors opened, the smell of gunpowder and adrenaline had poured into his nose and he knew that something was wrong. The screaming, and then gunfire, and the sudden searing pain in his shoulder had all but confirmed that. Something was very, very wrong.

The floor of the hangar was cold, but it had a warm, slick, liquid-y feeling to it that was wetting his shirt. He couldn't quite place it. He was hurt, he knew that, but he couldn't feel that side of his body much so the sensation of anything was weird. He was dazed, and he could hear muffled screaming but the burning in his chest seemed more important. It felt... weird. Like he was there but he wasn't. This wasn't like his other changes. They always hurt. Was he dead?

He laid on the floor staring straight ahead for what felt like a while but couldn't have been more than a few seconds. He saw people jerk and fall, some managing to hobble up or move. Some didn't. Amidst the chaos he saw Lynn got shot twice in the chest, the force of the bullets just about taking her off her feet. One landed home on Amelia's upper body, where her neck connected to her shoulder. She fell, and he couldn't see the damage and if it was fatal or not. His eyes flashed to Eli just in time to see a round enter and exit her left calf.

He heard screaming. He wasn't sure if it was his own.

---

Just a little bit worse than someone getting kicked in the face.

“WHAT THE FUCK!”

Trevor’s exclamation of shock over the comm line was sudden and effective in making D spring into action. He was on the upper level overlooking the left side of the loading bay. The invading group rushed out of their hijacked shuttle, quickly entering into the crowd and unloading into them with their own array of firearms - rifles and machine guns. One of them took the initiative to look up and start firing into the gathering above. D lept back, as did several attending students, all bolting for the exit to the cafeteria. Four of them went down, one attempting to crawl away, but ceasing movement seconds later.

“Jesus CHRIST, DO SOMETHING!”

On it, Mister Norton.

D, still low to the ground, paused for just a moment to browse his options. The assailant most likely still had a bead on the upper level. So, a distraction would be in order. And he had just the right item for the job.

D placed both of his hands on his head. A few quick clicks and whirs sounded from his neck, as the space between his head and his torso suddenly became vacant. He detached his head from his body manually, in the place of the open neck space emerging a small, disc-shaped module on the end of a rod - a secondary visual device, just peeking out of the jacket collar.

D reared his arms back, head in his hands, and then proceeded to fling his big red mug over the railing and into the crowd. The sight of the head immediately caught the attention of the assailant who’d been watching the upper level, firing at it as it sailed through the air. Only seconds later was his firing interrupted upon the headless body of D rapidly descending from on high, tackling the assailant to the cold, blood-stained floor. The bodiless head of D, meanwhile, landed away from the ensuing craziness and, in the middle of his roll, popped out from the opening at his base four quintuply-jointed metal legs. A feature that he hadn’t made use of until this moment, and that Trevor had remained unaware of given his abstaining from rooting through D’s head. The bodiless head immediately began skittering away, at a remarkably quick pace no less, away from all the danger.

D’s headless body, on the other hand, stayed behind. He took the pinned assailant’s head in his hands and slammed it on the floor several times, until he was out cold. It was then that he turned his attention towards the next nearest enemy, who’d taken to looking the same way just in time to see his ally’s unconscious body, and the headless robot standing over him. And with no hesitation, he turned his rifle on D and began firing.

Bullets went both flying by headless D, and straight into him as well. Sparks flew out for everything hit that wasn’t protected by the thick gel coating, more bullets getting lodged inside. D jerked from side to side with each impact, pace slowing just a little before reaching his target and tackling him to the floor, just as he did the last one. Once he was pinned underneath the robot’s weight, D began connecting his fists to the assailant’s face in rapid succession - until he was interrupted by a sudden noise.

The man pressed a black spot somewhere on his own vest. Scanned his fingertip.

Three rapid beeps, followed by a long one at a slightly higher pitch. Orange lights accompanied each beep.

And then - boom.

Explosives, in the assailant’s vest. Activated manually.

A mixture of blood, viscera, clothes, equipment, and mechanical components flew out in all directions.

One assailant was dead. Another was unconscious. And the headless body of D was destroyed.

The bodiless head, however, was elsewhere.

And the screaming, the shooting, the chaos - all went on yet still.

Lynn chewed again on Amelia's words. Everybody's got something lucky they hold onto, right? Lynn had never felt particularly blessed with good luck - the sole stroke of blessed fortune was getting the single public defender in the continental United States that cared about parahumans assigned to her case, but Lynn had never attributed much to luck. I'd trade luck to be tall enough to ride the rollercoasters, honestly. Besides, there'd been little in Lynn's life she felt like she'd ever held onto for very long. Her hoodie, maybe, one of the few possession that made it through parahuman juvy, but even then, she never felt like it was much in the way of luck. Lynn listened closely to what she said about cults. Sororities? Lynn had really never heard much about them. She knew they were like societies or something, from Italy, maybe? And they were all slutty, but that was about all the intel she had. Lynn considered attending college and becoming President of the United States as equally likely for her, so she'd never looked much into it. Still, that didn't stop her from forming an opinion.

"Well, we should get one started here," Lynn said, in the sort of blank affect tone that was never clear if it was joking or serious, even to herself. "At least we'd be making some money off the brainwashing."

Denim and Denzel came over, and Lynn felt a brief flutter of mercy that he and Natalie weren't anywhere around. Maybe there's some luck after all. Wonder if there's any gambling here. Lynn had been interested in the boxing leagues the Promise had, but they were banned to elemental parahumans. It'd hadn't stopped her from watching as many matches as she could, and offering to spar with any of them behind closed doors. A few had taken her up on it, and it'd been a nice shake-up from hitting a heavy bag. The more violently-minded ones were won over by Lynn's offer they could literally hit her as hard as they wanted and she'd be fine the next morning. Who said I don't know how to win men over, huh?

Keaton and Eli walked up and Lynn's brain jumped between a few thoughts, all of them the sort that felt like the moment right before you take the plunge. What had they been talking about? Why were they coming over? Why were they hanging out for so long? Why - Lynn blinked, and felt her pocket for her phone. It was turned off - and also back in her dorm. Lynn had been forgetting things lately. The one day she made it to class the previous week, she'd forgotten her bag. "I...shit, my bad," Lynn said, blinking. She turned to Keaton as she answered her question, keeping her voice steady but hoping to say more with her now-orange eyes. "Oh, you know. Who knows what kinds of interesting things you might turn up here," she said. Keaton and I need to meet again soon. I have to tell her about the loading docks.

Eli had asked more or less the same thing, and Lynn greeted her - to her own surprise, with a smile. "What's up," she said. Lynn looked around the crowded room and saw Eli meet Freaky D's gaze. Lynn felt her jaw tense. The last time he'd been present when kids got brought in, she'd wound up far closer to death than she'd admit. If he comes here, there could be problems. Christ, why don't he and Cara just fuck already and stop causing problems for the rest of us.

Lynn looked down at her cafeteria tray, freshly devoured. She was still hungry. "You think there's time to - "

The doors opened and Lynn's eyes widened. Her heart jumped and her mind flashed from here to a dozen different places, the sounds of gunshots blasting out glass and windows.

There were few things that Lynn was more qualified at than the other students her age. She was not as gentle as Archie. She was not as profound as Natalie, as sharp as Keaton, forgiving as Eli, artistic as Amelia, or have good watches like Fossil or whatever his nickname had been. She couldn't even flop as good as Fish. But Lynn, for better or worse, was perhaps the single most qualified person to handle a drive-by.

"Get the - " Lynn started to shout, but she was too slow. She'd always been too slow. The machine guns thundered and Amelia's neck exploded beside her, splattering Lynn with blood she did not register she felt across her face. Lynn was already dropping her tray, already -

The blow connected with Lynn's head and she crumpled to the floor, the world spinning. Lynn spat out a tooth. It would grow back in two weeks or so. She looked up.

Che shook his right hand, grimacing. The knuckles were red. "You burned me."

"I'm sorry," Lynn said, automatically - you said I'm sorry whenever you could, because you never knew when you did something wrong, and you wanted to get ahead of it and make sure Che didn't get mad. But this time Che wasn't mad. He was teaching her to be tough. She had to be tough.

"Come here," he said, pulling her back inside the house. Calling it a house was charitable - a few of Che's business partners this week owned it, and nearly everything was in a state of disarray. The TV alone functioned flawlessly, and he sat Lynn down before it. Her backpack with her grade school homework sat forgotten leaning against the couch that had been baptized in cigarette smoke a thousand times over. Che put something on TV. An old fight. Some of Lynn's favorites - though she didn't recognize the fighter.

"His name was Smokin' Joe."

He looked down at Lynn, who grinned, a trickle of blood oozing out. "Like me."

Che nodded, giving her the quarter-smile. She only once or twice got a half-smile - when she'd done a really important job for him and when she'd (for a moment, Lynn thought about the bottle, breaking in her hand, and her face, but then it was gone) - but she got the quarter-smiles every now and then. "Like you. You know what Smokin' Joe did? He never took a step back. Not a single fuckin' one. Always forward. He could take it."

"I can take it too."

"Good," Che said. On the chair beside them, a man in a drug-induced stupor drooled listlessly and stared at the screen, unaware entirely they'd changed it, but to Lynn, she may as well have been in a palace, kneeling before the monarch who was knighting her. "Because when you're a little older, I'll need you to. You have to rush in and keep us safe. Because you can take the hits. The others can't, they - "

Lynn was moving forward when suddenly she wasn't. Lynn was on the floor. Had she tripped? She blinked, looking around. She had been shot before, but not like this. Something was wrong. The center of her chest was a bloody mess, which irritated her more than it did frighten her, and her legs refused to work. Lynn didn't hurt as much as she thought she should, which was to be expected. Just felt like getting punched, real hard, at least until everything started falling out. Lynn grunted and went to pull herself up. She couldn't. The smell of the cafeteria floor being scorched as she cauterized her wounds filled the air along with the smell of gunpowder and blood and the smell of panic, of a hundred people ruining themselves as their bodies shut down and the rest sweating and shaking.

Lynn blinked. "No," she murmured. "No, fuck, fuck, no, damnit, get up!" she tried to push herself up again and nothing happened. She felt down and grabbed at her leg. She felt nothing. She ran her hand over the wound and around to her back. Christ. In the spine. Lynn leaned back down, trying to present as small a profile as possible - which, mercifully, was not difficult for her. She was going to die as a cripple. Weak. Broken. Amelia. Amelia can get me closer. Lynn dragged herself a foot or two closer and looked at the girl in front of her. Lynn's mind had been racing so fast she forgot the girl was shot. She was already pretty pale but she was getting pale a lot faster, and all the hair on the right side of her head was matted thick with blood. Lynn looked up at her for assent, grimaced, and uttered a quick, "Sorry."

She didn't know, in that brief moment, if she was apologizing that it was going to hurt, or if that she was going to look like Lynn after. With the sound of bullets tearing through the air a foot and a half over her head, that thought occurred to Lynn. You're gonna be ugly now, you poor bitch.

Then Lynn grabbed a hand over as much of the wound as she could and grunted. There was the smell of flesh being flash-scorched and the exit wound sealing off as she cauterized as much as she dared. Lynn thought she'd gotten the most of it, and uttered another - rare, genuine - apology as she rolled back over. everything below the sternum was numb. She couldn't crawl closer, she thought, her mind racing. If she did, she'd get gunned down before she ever get close. How many of them were there? Lynn couldn't see particularly well over a corpse next to her, a girl that looked barely older than her.

Lynn shut it out of her mind. She'd seen people who started noticing things like the necklace of the state of Montana around her neck or the t-shirt with a witty caption that was riddled with bullet holes on her. If you noticed stuff like that instead of how many of them there were, or what they were packing, you got killed too. Lynn could see one about thirty feet away. Even if Amelia had been hidden, she thought, Lynn didn't think she could teleport both of them over. She looked back over at them, desperation gnawing at her. Fucking do something, she wanted to scream. You're going to die on the floor like a crippled fucking coward?

Lynn twisted her neck back around the other way with utter disregard for the state of spine. She could see the others, it looked like Eli had been winged, but -

- Archie. When did he - Lynn saw him on the ground, bleeding. If he wasn't turning, then it must be bad, it must be as bad as Amelia's or even worse. She hesitated. She could pull herself over, she could cauterize him. Lynn didn't even know if him turning would be bad. If they were all going to die, at least these machine gun fuckers - Gennedy, if I live, I will burn you worse than you'll burn in hell she thought, amidst it all, furious, furious that nothing had ever worked for her, that she was going to die on the loading bay floors a hundred yards from a box with the proof she needed to find them - at least they might die too.

The guns behind her kept thundering, and Lynn felt her stomach turn cold and sick.

How many people were they shooting?

Archie was only one. Fifteen or twenty feet back from her.

Lynn turned back. Che would've left him to die, too, a little voice told her. And me, a South African voice whispered. And maybe when it's done you can still have your way with him before -

Lynn twisted onto her side, grunting from the exertion. Christ, this was bad. She took a breath or two for a moment, trying to steady herself. She pushed how awful she felt - Archie, bleeding on the floor, staring right at you - not away, but down onto the embers, and she stoked the coals. She could feel herself getting hotter. Wouldn't matter. Lynn reckoned her lifespan was in seconds, and if she withered here at least she'd melt a few - four people vaporized - with her. She stared, looking for anything she could use. They were getting smoked -

Lynn grinned, pain shooting through her as she reached into her pocket. She had to try and balance herself with what few muscles remained functional to her as she drew out her pack of cigarettes, trembling in her hands. You pussy, she thought. Stop acting like you're losing your gunshot virginity and do something. Lynn opened up the packet, pulling out one cigarette. She gripped it for a moment, taking a deep breath. It flickered alight, and she tucked it down in the pack. Timing. Timing was everything. She waited one moment, two -

The cigarettes were half-lit now, and the fire was spreading. Lynn hurled it as best she could at the nearest gunman. She'd never taken into account how much your back and core were needed for a good throw, and it landed a few feet off the mark - but it was close enough. The gunman stopped, turning to look at it for just a bare moment. Maybe he thought it was a grenade, or some kind of trick.

Little of both. Lynn tried to block everything out - the throbbing pain in her core, the screams all around her, him curled up on the floor in his own blood, Eli's leg, Amelia's neck - and focus on the pack of cigarettes. She watched the flame blossom up more and more, devouring the pack through the cardboard. Lynn took a deep breath and felt it flicker closer to her, as if it was pulling and yearning to be back to its master. Lynn could almost feel its heat, she thought. Lynn turned her focus to the machinegun in the man's gloved hands, the barrel already hot from the half-a-hundred rounds he'd rattled through it.

"Holy shit!" He muttered, twisting his .45 to examine it. The barrel was red hot, and it had kicked twice as hard as it usually did. Che rubbed at his wrist and looked at it, smoke rolling off the muzzle.

"Is that bad?"

"No," Che murmured, thinking, and grinning - a half-grin - staring at the weapon in his hand. "It's good. It's very good. We - "

Lynn saw as he kept firing, the barrel getting red hot. It was just water in a mug. She just had to boil the water. Not anybody else near her, not the bodies in front of her twitching and convulsing - not Montana Girl, who probably said smart ass things that would've annoyed Lynn, just the water in the mug. Lynn took another deep breath, pushing it all out. This was like round seven or eight. You were starting to get battered pretty bad but you weren't out yet. Lynn tried to feel the heat, tried to feel it with her own, as if she could set the whole world on fire with just a spark if she had to. The cigarette pack flared up beside the man, jumping to a foot and a half tall before it died back down, the cigarettes burned through. The strain of it was pulling at every inch of Lynn, as if each part of her body had tried to pull against itself, and she could feel her own flames flickering down as she pushed herself too hard. Christ the only class I'm passing is power training, let me fucking do this.

The man screamed in pain, hopping back. The tip of his barrel was white-hot, and some of the metal had dripped down onto his shoe, melting through. Lynn felt as though Spoons had picked up a freight train and beaten her with it. The edges of her vision were darkening and there was a dull thudding somewhere in her skull. Or chest. Both. She kept going. Once Lynn Frazier got smokin', after all, you couldn't stop her, and Eli and Lucy and Clarita were behind her. She bit down as hard as she could to keep from screaming and drawing any more attention than a girl on fire already would, and pushed the heat as much as she could - half her strength gone to fanning the thermal energy, the other to keeping it in the mug, to just the boiling water, to not letting the mug break.

He desperately tried to lift the machine gun and take aim, but the barrel was warping. He pulled the trigger and nothing happened. He fumbled, trying to clear the chamber, and that set it off. The bullet in the chamber exploded prematurely, and its brothers and sisters in the ammo box followed suit. Each one seemed to hit Lynn with a punch in the gut from the force it took to wear down their points of combustion, to aggravate the heat and flame that made them burst open, and to make the steel of the gun melt quicker.

The machine gun exploded in his hands, sending shrapnel back into his chest and arms, and making molten metal splatter up onto him. The man screamed in a language Lynn thought she vaguely recognized. Fish? she thought for a moment, blearily. Everything was spinning. You're joining me soon, bitch, she heard Salamandra giggle, wheezing as she leaned back against the wall. Was someone choking her? Lynn was having trouble catching her breath. The back of her neck felt bare, which didn't make sense, because she had hair there - and her skin felt cold, but there should've been clothes. Smoke clung to her, and the hand she was holding out to the gunman had fallen to the elbow, and then the wrist. No weight Lynn had ever lifted was so heavy as keeping her fingers off the ground, trying to strain her abilities, to hit this man with all the force she had, and more precision than she was capable of. Chinese, Lynn thought. Or, close the fuck enough, no one cares if a corpse is wrong.

"Hey fucker," Lynn wheezed. "I can't see the Great Wall from up here after all, you know, you - "

The man was screaming, reaching up with his mangled hands to his ski mask, which he was able to rip off with scalded fingers. Lynn hadn't been able to see before, but the molten metal had splashed to his face and was fusing the mask to his skin. Fucking right, Lynn thought. You're the sort of bastard who kills -

He looked up at Lynn with wide, horrified eyes. He was screaming. He couldn't have been more than thirteen years old. He was screaming. He had gangly long arms that were longer than his legs, they hadn't growed evenly. He was screaming. His face where he was trying to grow in facial hair was burning, melting through, superheated metal or molten barrel, it didn't matter, he couldn't get it off, couldn't get it out. He was screaming.

Lynn stared, suddenly colder than she had ever been in her whole life. "No. No, no, I didn't, I'm not, I didn't - "

Lynn turned, where one of his comrades had seen what happened. She knew what happened next. She wanted to think of a lot of things, but none of them came to her. Lynn ground her teeth against one another and tried to push herself up, to die on her feet, but nothing was working. The comrade raised a rifle and fired off a burst. Only one hit. Only one needed to. Keaton, Lynn thought, wildly. "The loading docks, the, they're, you have - "

Lynn had been hit very hard in her life. She had taken punches from fully grown men, and had Natalie thrown into her by a full-powered Archie, and been beaten at the hands of Salamandra. She had been shot before this, by bigger bullets at closer range. She'd been beaten in prison, in the ring, and jumped on the street.

Not a single blow to the head rocked her spine as much as that bullet did. If her skull had still been in tact, she might've snapped about how she'd been hit by a .45 round before, and it had hurt a hell of a lot worse. Instead her head snapped. It was slammed against the ground and went still. The world was running in front of her eyes, but half of it was dark. The floor was cool. Someone had spilled something. It felt wet. Warm. Lynn tried to move to get closer to the warm, because she was cold, she was very cold, but she couldn't move. Her legs weren't working. She didn't think any of her was working. Someone had spilled something. Her head hurt. Was she drunk? I killed a kid, Lynn thought, but even her thoughts were slurring. Was she back in the woods? I drank too much, Lynn thought. I drank too much. This was a bad joke. Keaton or Eli or Che would come and fix this. The restaurant, she's gonna get out of the restaurant and get him. She's gonna hurt him. But that didn't make sense. She had to cauterize him. There were lights, flickering, flickering. She couldn't see as good. There was something dripping in her left eye, she couldn't see so good out of it. There was no noise, though, and she thought they should be. No one was screaming any more. Lynn knew that was good.

Lynn blinked.

Or winked.

Natalie Ellis

---

---

The doors opened, and the gunfire immediately started. Natalie wasn't scared at first. At first this didn't seem real. Then though around her started to get hit and her body took over. She got to the floor and looked towards Archie. He'd be hit. He was bleeding. Natalie's eyes went wide, her hands formed tense fists and without realizing it, she was shaking. She looked back at the pod. Gunmen were streaming from it and the crowds were being mowed down. It was a massacre.

Natalie's biggest fear was always herself. She was a monster. There was a side to her that killed people and it terrified her. She wanted rid of it, to live a normal life. Even after what Project Lion did to her, she couldn't believe she'd killed them. She'd created this 'other Natalie' to scapegoat. But the truth was that when she was scared, she wasn't changing into a new person. Being perfectly honest, it was more like every other time, she was trying to become a new person. Trying to find fragments of a personality from her old life and assemble them into a new life. And she had some success in that. But after two years of being experimented on, enduring that kind of pain and suffering, insanity barely described it. She was a shell. Pain, fear and hatred were all she knew. But now she wasn't scared of herself. Archie had been hurt. People were dying. All of her, even the parts that wanted a normal life, wished death upon everyone was attacking her. No excuses. She wanted them to die, and she was going to kill them.

Almost immediately, she felt like a great tension had been lifted from her head, and her body stopped shaking. First, she had to not die, and they had very heavy duty guns. The type that might even go through her skull at close range. She had to be careful, and she had to find cover. She looked for the largest gunman she could find that didn't require running past all the others. She saw one, quite close by. He was much larger than her. Without taking the risk of waiting for any longer, she made a beeline for him, staying low and zig-zagging her movements to make herself harder to shoot. As soon as she reached him, she grabbed his gun, squeezed it so that it no longer fired, and with a single punch, caved in the man's head. she grabbed him and looked past his shoulder. Now she had a shield. She started slowly advancing towards the rest, taking care not to run lest she trip over a body.

Amelia

---

Amelia couldn't help but grin at Lynn as she suggested starting their own cult. She cocked her head. "Who knows. Gather the other jewelry people together, get them organized. Sounds like a lovely start for-" Amelia quickly cut herself off as Keaton and Eli made their way over. Annnnnnnnnnd there goes the revolution, Amelia thought to herself. Still, she reasserted her mischevious grin, and gave a more focused wave to the two of them. "Yo!" She could help but smirk as Eli asked what their intentions were. Oh, she REAAAALLY doesn't get it, does she? Amelia closed her eyes with satisfaction at the question, content to just let the mystery assert itself without answer. She was ready to follow up a retort to Lynn's question, when all of a sudden the sound of gunfire drew her attention, and she was thrown back to the floor with sudden intense force.

Amelia had been through police brutality before. She had been tazed, hit with rubber bullets, hit with batons, fallen off a moving car, even pepper sprayed right in the face when she had be caught. But Amelia had never been actually shot before. And so Amelia seemed to feel the world fade away around her, in complete shock. Feeling suddenly sluggish, Amelia reached for her neck, where it was suddenly wet. Pulling it away, she looked at her hand.

That was a lot of blood.

The shock seemed to be dulling the pain, for the moment. She just....stared for a few moments, her mind unable and unwilling to comprehend she had been shot, and possibly lethally. And then, Amelia vaguely saw Lynn crawl up to her, almost a blur to her vision.

And then there was pain.

Amelia shrieked with agony as Lynn cauterized her wound, nearly passing out from the sudden burns to her skin. Amelia's whirling mind half thought that it would have been a mercy if she had. However, Amelia remained awake after the experience, the sudden intense pain suddenly bringing everything back into focus. On instinct, she crawled a bit away, and teleported herself behind a crate. She tried to compose herself, taking deep breaths to calm herself down. She needed to bail. NOW. This was going horrifically, and Amelia had no way to fight this many armed people. She was a runner, not a fighter. Amelia strained to focus on the hospital, when she suddenly smelt burning flesh and heard horrible screams. She looked over and saw Lynn fighting back against one of the gunmen, even while injured. Amelia couldn't help but feel just a bit lesser for a moment. Until another one aimed a gun down at a nearly defenseless Lynn. And everything just seemed to slow down.

Amelia's jaw dropped. Her eyes went wide. Internally, she was begging and pleading. It didn't matter. The gun still fired. And then everything went red. Amelia wasn't going to run. Not this time. Here was the representation of everything she was fighting against, clear as day, shooting her best friend into the ground. This time Amelia would pay them back.

Glancing around wildly, Amelia saw in the back corner a rifle covered in viscera and surrounded by slag metal. Amelia didn't question its origin, only if she could reach it. With the focus of the gunmen suddenly on a berserk Natalie, Amelia saw her moment. She vanished, appearing next to the gun and picking it up. Amelia didn't have much experience with guns. Actually, she had no experience with firing guns. But she was undeterred. She was making her statement, damn the consequences.

The shooter who had gunned down Lynn suddenly found next to her body was an enraged Amelia, from seemingly nowhere. In her arms was a clumsily held rifle. Almost Rambo-like, Amelia shrieked with rage, aimed the rifle at the man, and held down the trigger. For all of 2 seconds. That complete lack of training, combined with her injured shoulder and the leftover dregs of Lynn's aura caused the force of the burst to knock Amelia on her ass. If the bullets had struck her target, Amelia's whirling mind didn't register it. But more importantly he wasn't looking at her for at least a split second. And that was all she needed. Amelia fell over on Lynn and focused as hard as she could, and the two of them suddenly teleported into the back of the cafeteria, out of line of sight.

Amelia slammed down a table for cover and started looking over her Lynn. Amelia could vaguely hear Lynn murmuring something half heard about governments and conspiracies. Amelia tried to shake her to awareness. "Lynn. Lynn come on! We can talk about how we were right later, we need to..." Amelia froze as she turned Lynn over, and saw the damage. It was horrifying to her. Aside from the bullet wound, Lynn was missing an eye. Tears began to pour down her face as her look of determination changed to grief. "Lynn....No, no no no no no no no no no no!" Amelia held Lynn close, and tried to teleport to the hospital. It was no use. Her mind was so unfocused, or she had drawn enough attention, she wasn't sure; her body only crackled with energy, unwilling to destabilize its location. Amelia screamed. "Help! Someone please, she's hurt!" Amelia could only do her best to help control the blood-flow with her jacket and sob.

---

Every reason to be as far away from the welcoming activities slipped out of Eli's mind as she listened to her friends chat. The few times that the four of them had been in the same place together were a strange mix of pleasant exchanges and awful misfortune. Oddly enough Eli was all smiles as she looked at the three of them now. For the first time in what felt like forever, Eli felt as if she could finally enjoy a day in public. Here she was, standing with two increasingly important people in her life and Amelia, whose mischievous grin and witty remarks intrigued Eli. Maybe they could enjoy this bleak day in each other's company.

With a group like this, she knew that there would be plenty of remarks about the way The Promise's staff ran things here. Surely the girls had been aboard long enough to notice a few things about the station. After all, this was the first boarding day since they came to the space boat. The last time any launch pod came to the station, it carried the three of them over. She made a mental note to ask them about what some of her friends were calling the "godzilla fight". All that she remembered hearing of it was that a student turned into a giant lizard and wrecked the cafeteria. It was long due for the dining hall to buy new tables, but she never thought it would happen that way.

Just as she was about to ask them about it, she noticed that the final shuttle's doors were opening. The student greeter entered the pod, but Eli's attention turned to Lynn as she began to speak. Lynn never reached the end of her sentence.

There was suddenly a heavy crack of noise from inside of the last pod. Eli felt the air stale around her, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood tall as she stared at the empty space before the third shuttle. She recognized the sound. She'd heard something similar in the woods at the homecoming party. Right before she'd seen Agent Radvi's face blown apart. Except this sound was louder and more sinister.

They came out of the shuttle like agents of death. Armed to the teeth, dressed like they were going into war, they swarmed the launch bay like bees. Most of the students were already making their way into the cafeteria. That's where they should have been already, but they hadn't had enough time to register it. They didn't even have time to run.

The bullets came at the crowd like tiny rockets. Instant panic set in. Eli felt her body freeze, but her heart beat loud and painfully in her chest. She'd heard about attacks like this on Earth. Articles that described the massacres and mini genocides dotted every parahuman-written news source Eli followed. She could never imagine what those poor parahumans had endured. She'd never wish it upon anyone, nonetheless expect the hate to make its way onto The Promise. But it was here. On the only place she felt safe enough from the people driven by malice. People like the men and women before her, who carelessly sprayed bullets with the intent to kill.

The noise that filled the launch bay overwhelmed all of Eli's senses. Every scream and boom of a rifle melted into one loud symphony of chaos. She cowered as a particularly fortissimo CRACK CRACK CRACK sounded nearby, and as she heard the bullets whiz by her head turned to see them land in Lynn's chest next to her. Another WHIZZ and her head whipped around to see a bullet slice through Amelia's neck in front of her. The shock slowly registered in Eli's expression. Her mouth hung open as if she was choking on air, her neck tensed as if she were about to cry out in terror, and her eyes were already brimming with tears.

For a few seconds, Eli stood amidst the bloody bodies around her. Everything was happening so fast. So many people were falling. Each thud of a body on the launch bay's floor sent another chill down her spine and she trembled. She turned her head to see that Keaton was still standing too, and then noticed that Archie was among the fallen. She looked into his eyes, and they shared a brief moment of shock together before Eli felt as if her left leg was torn from her body.

Eli's cries melted into the noise. She lost sensation in her body for a moment as she overcame the urge to faint. Her unhurt leg wobbled until she knelt onto the ground to relieve it of the weight of her body. The pain quickly returned. A burning sensation so strong that she thought she'd dipped it in lava. She gripped her knee, her body shaking as she looked down at the wound in her calf. The legging covered most of her leg, but she could tell that there was something extremely wrong by the shape of her calf. Blood soaked her legging and dripped onto the floor below.

Eli grimaced at the sight, a strained whine barely making it through her clenched teeth. She doubled over from the pain and hoped that anything would relieve her of this torture. Her nails dug into her leg above the bullet wound. Which unfortunately did nothing to distract her from the overwhelming sensation of fire she felt in her leg. She tried shutting her eyes in an attempt to block out the chaotic world around her, but it didn't work. Even with her eyes closed, she could see the blood. She could look upon every lifeless student on the ground around her. She saw similar images in her dreams, but of the bodies from the breakout. So much blood. So many of her people dead. She screamed into the blood spattered ground before her.

When she opened her eyes, she saw Lynn had crawled over to Amelia. Eli barely registered that Lynn was cauterizing the wound. She could only see the darkening splotches of blood in the back of her hoodie. She'd been shot twice, but she could still move! And here Eli was, completely immobilized from a bullet to the leg. How? How was she so weak in comparison? How could Lynn move on as if she'd only been punched in the chest?

Lynn looked over at her, but before Eli could even sputter out a word or two she saw Lynn's eyes move away. She was still afraid. Just as afraid as Eli felt right now. So, how did she appear so calm? She'd looked the same on homecoming night. Yet she still sprung into action. She still ran into the ravine and put pressure on Radvi's wounds, while Eli grasped at straws in a foolish attempt to capture Arianna. She was jumping into action even now, and Eli could only endure the pain in her leg and watch as more of her people were taken down.

A young girl shrieked to her left and Eli's gaze hazily made its way to look at her. The girl was around the same age that Eli came aboard The Promise. Her dress was covered in blood, but it looked as if she had only been grazed on the cheek. The blood came from the dead students in front of her, and it seemed as if she'd just regained consciousness. The girl's gaze was fixed on the figure walking towards her. A few of the men remained in the launch bay, and Eli realized that they were putting a bullet into anyone that moved in front of them as their fellow terrorists continued into the cafeteria. The girl cowered as the man slowly made his way towards her now. His hands reloaded a handgun as his LMG rested across his back.

Eli looked around her, her eyes searching for anyone or anything that could help them. Where was the robot? Hadn't D been here, just a mere minutes ago? Where's Rad-? She looked back towards Lynn and Amelia, but as her eyes laid themselves on Lynn's slumped figure she was hit with a terrifying feeling of deja vu. Lynn's face was a mangled mess of blood and skin. Just like Radvi's had looked that night. This time there was no Lynn to put pressure on the wound. Instead, Eli watched as Amelia came into view by Lynn. Eli quickly closed her eyes, hoping that Amelia would be able to get Lynn to safety. When she opened them, she saw that they were gone. A few tears trickled down her cheeks as she looked at the spot where Lynn once was.

The girl continued to sob and shriek behind her, and Eli turned to look back at the scene before her. Her heart was racing. The girl was frozen in place, just like Eli had been what felt like ages ago. The attacker was focused on his gun. The magazine had been prepped long before he stepped foot on The Promise. He'd already dropped the empty magazine onto the ground. It clattered to the ground next to the lifeless boy he stepped over. Now he slid the new one into the base of the pistol. With a powerful grip, he snapped it into place and cocked the gun. Eli jumped as she heard the pistol's slide SNAP into place. A second later, the man was a few meters away from the girl. Eli could see the crinkles of pleasure around his eyes as he raised his arm and aimed for her brow.

Ba-dump. . . ba-dump. . . ba-dump. . .

"NOOO!"

Eli shrieked before he could fire, her anger manifesting in every inch of her expression. It felt like a dam of emotions burst from Eli's body. She hadn't felt this scared in her lifetime. She hadn't felt this angry in years. She thought of her murdered friend, Ezekiel; of Radvi and Lynn, who had now been shot in similar ways by similar people. Of every time she'd been hit or thrown to the ground by others that didn't understand her. That knew she was different and targeted her for it. Of all of the times she'd heard of a little girl or boy slaughtered on her way home from school, or families killed at their dining tables for simply being parahuman. All of the grief and frustration she felt for her people came barreling out of her and into the man that held a young girl at gunpoint and any of the other false soldiers that remained in the launch bay.

The man's view of the girl suddenly distorted. The world around him began to spin and warp at unimaginable speeds. An overwhelming wave of nausea struck him like the bullet that struck Lynn in the chest, or Amelia in the neck, or Archie in the shoulder. Or the bullet that missed the girl before him and lodged itself into the wall behind her. Eli continued to scream at them, her pain and anguish fueling the barrage of v e r t i g o that disoriented the few terrorists around her.

Eli continued her onslaught, and while the man felt extremely sick and dizzy, he managed to aim his pistol. It was pointed in the direction of the screaming parahuman, whom he assumed was behind his sudden sickness. He fired twice, both landing in the ground to the left of Eli. Eli's rage had filled her eyes with tears, but through the blur she could tell that he was shooting at her. She could feel the wind of the bullets as the passed by. The sound they made as they connected with the floor or dead bodies behind her. In the back of her mind she was aware that she should be afraid. That she shouldn't have drawn his attention towards her. What else could she have done, though? Sat and watched as he killed the girl? And eventually bit the bullet when he made his way towards herself? No. This was the only action Eli felt like she could take. That she must take.

The man stumbled towards her. Both of his hands gripped the pistol in an attempt to steady it, but the vertigo made it feel like up was down. Like left was right. At least three or four, he couldn’t tell, of Eli swam in his vision as he snarled in frustration. He fired again, and again. The first bullet whipped past Eli’s shoulder and hit the ground behind her, her hair tousled by the wind of it. The second grazed her left arm.

Eli yelped, the momentary shock of pain halting her illusions for a moment. She reached up to grip her arm, while the man slowly steadied his pistol as his vision regain normalcy. Eli looked back up at him, her face contorted in anguish. He couldn’t win. She wasn’t going to become one of the thousand children that never returned to Earth. She wouldn’t accept this death. Certainly not from a man who fired at defenseless kids.

Just as the man’s aim gained stability, the barrel pointed directly at the forehead, Eli regained focus. Suddenly, the view of the frightened girl in front of the gunman slowly faded to black. At first he wasn't frightened. He'd killed in the dark before. He could still feel-... the trigger? The warm metal of the handgun vanished into thin air. In fact, he couldn't even feel the ground under his feet. He... he couldn't feel anything. He knew his arms were moving, and there was a soft pressure on his body where he placed his hands, but he couldn't feel the sensation of cloth to skin. He could only hear the distant gunfire, the clank of metal hitting concrete, and the heavy breathing of the girl. He suddenly realized that he'd misplaced his gun. Anger consumed him as he heard her scramble for something on the ground between them. The feeling of the charged air returned to his fingers, and he grinned as he felt the solid floor of The Promise beneath his feet. She was weak. He could still crush her even as a blind, weaponless man. With a roar, he flung himself in her direction.

Eli hadn't expected the man to lunge for her. She'd been too busy fumbling with the gun. Her shaky hands weren't trained to hold a weapon like this, and it was hard to focus on the terrorist as well as the task of gripping the gun the right way. She hadn't even realized that he'd regained the feeling in his toes. His body crashed into hers, his knee momentarily connecting with her bloody calf. Pain rippled up her leg and it came out of her throat as a pained whimper. His hands were grasping at her as they fell to the ground. One found her hair and held on tightly, the other pushing her throat downwards with force. Her head connected with the floor just as her finger found the trigger. In her shock, she squeezed.

They both froze. As the gunman's eyes regained their vision, he was numbly staring into Eli's brown eyes. They were widening in terror, the reality of their brief tussle dawning on her as she felt the gun that was pressed between their bodies slowly become coated in warm ooze. The gun had fired, directly into the man's ribcage. He coughed and sputtered, blood spattering Eli's face as she flinched. His grip in her hair slacked, and as Eli opened her eyes she saw him fall off of her onto his side. They both trembled next to each other. Eli stared at the ceiling as she listened to the man take his last few ragged breaths.

Her calf burned like the sun. Her head felt sore against the concrete. Her left arm was tight and she felt blood trickling down her sleeve. The gunfire in the distance was growing less frequent. Was it over? Eli wanted it to be over. She wanted to be back in Arizona. With the warm sun shining on her face. She wanted to be back in her room watching cheesy movies with Keaton.

"Keaton..." She croaked, realizing that she hadn't seen her friend in the melee of violence since she'd been shot. She turned her head to look for her, her eyes brimming with tears as she grew worried for her friend. "Keaton!?" She dug her elbow in the ground below her, grunting as she tried to sit herself up again. Someone was suddenly next to her and Eli cowered, but it was only the girl from before. She was sobbing and reaching for Eli to embrace her. Eli felt her heart break into pieces as she listened to her repeat the words "thank you" over and over until she pulled away to catch her breath. Eli could only offer the girl a shaky smile. "It's alright, now," she murmured, yet she kept her hands firmly wrapped around the handgun.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe!

Their breath caught in their throat. How had they forgotten how to breathe? Their eyes struggled to open. The oppressive lighting had been enough when their head wasn't swimming, but now it was blinding. Kas brought their hands to their head and pressed at their temples, anything to help ground themselves. How'd they gotten here? Where were they? They hazarded a peek, the pain of the light drawing a sharp exasperated hiss that thankfully proved to them that they did know how to breathe. It was just the drugs scrambling their head.

Drugs?

Right. Drugs. Someone had doped them up when they came to earlier. But... why? it clicked an instant later; probably on account of Kas implying they could probably bite off their own tongue and choke themselves to death, taking down the shuttle if it didn't bring them back home. Some people. No sense of humour. Kas shook their head, as if it would help wring out the still present haze surrounding them. All it achieved was a new height of vertigo that resulted in a pool of bile on the floor beside them. New plan.

Kas groped at their ankles as pieces began to settle into place. They weren't cuffed anymore. And... if they could reach their ankles this easily then... Kas stretched their arms out, confirming to themselves that they were, in fact, uncuffed everywhere. Kas's eyes fluttered in a daring attempt to try and use more than one sense, but that just dragged the vertigo back to the surface and that stab of pain through their skull. They'd been drugged this heavily once before when they broke their arm and had to get it set as a child. That memory of waking up was still fresh even all these years later. They'd forgotten how to breathe as they slithered out of the drug-induced haze and could only silently scream as their body refused to listen to their struggles. In truth, they hadn't forgotten how to breathe. They were breathing just fine. Screaming even better. Turned out Kas just has a high sensitivity to sedatives.

With that in mind, they went back to forcing themselves to recuperate. There was no way they had just been left to their own devices once the shuttle got to whatever new hell was supposed to be awaiting them. That meant something was wrong. But if something was wrong, why was construction being done right outside of the pod? That thud thud thud over and over. Like a hammer against metal again and again. Even though Kas's scrambled senses the sound was overwhelming. They kept at trying to force themselves to investigate. On hands and knees they tried crawling, reorienting themselves every time they ran into something or started to get farther away from the thudding. Their hand landed in something warm and viscous. It stuck to them and as they tried to help themselves up they found more of that stickiness with a misplaced step. "Är det..." they muttered, twisting their ankle, smearing their foot through the mess until it pressed into something coarse. Some kind of linen. Linen with fading warmth beneath it.

Their blood went cold. Something's wrong, echoed in their head. Did the pod crash into the station? Was that a cause of the thudding? Kas stumbled on shaky legs, hugging the wall of the pod, inching closer and closer to the thuds. They threw another arm over their eyes, trying to peak out beneath it. It was all a blur, silhouettes and smears of blending grays. But they were getting close to the exit. "Hej?" they hazarded, their voice a croak, their throat dry and burning.

Out of the pod there were shapes Kas had to assume were people. Kas tried to say something again, but there was nothing this time. Just a faint hiss that felt drowned out by the thuds. They tried to get closer. Maybe these people could help. Maybe... Things began to focus in, shapes and sounds growing sharper. The thuds turned to cracks. The silhouettes turned to people intent on what was ahead of them. That source of the sharp cracks that made Kas's ears ache and their head throb the firearms clenched in the hands of these people. They hadn't noticed Kas yet coming up from behind them. Perhaps they had assumed everyone in Kas's pod had been accounted for. Kas made sure to alert them to their mistake when they tried to make a break away from the men and their knees buckled, sending them sprawling out onto the cold metallic floor of the launch bay with a thud and a hiss of "Fokk!"

---

“This ship’s interesting, that’s for sure,” Keaton said, flashing Lynn a grin. They were overdue for a meeting, but that was mainly because the past month had been pretty quiet. Before Homecoming, it’d been all about finding Arianna and hearing her side of the story. Now, she wasn’t so sure. What she was sure about, though, was the ship and the children on it, and that’s what she’d chosen to focus on.

Keaton was mid-thought when the doors opened, and she glanced over, her grin slipping off her face as she registered the guns—civilians—terrorists?—big guns—they’re going to—

The staccato beats of bullets ricocheting off steel dropped her to the ground, and she vaguely registered wet ‘thcks’ as her eyes darted between the crimson splotches staining her friends’ clothing. Eli’s leg—bone?—Lynn on the floor, her chest pooling red, Amelia’s neck, blood seeping through her hands. Lynn was up first—scrabbling first, reaching back—her spine—she healed fast—was that enough? An acrid smell indicated cauterization, and Keaton watched, transfixed as Lynn dragged herself towards Amelia. Her lips moved, and Amelia screamed, a trail of smoke flowing from Lynn’s glowing hand.

Sounds melded together as Keaton looked back to Eli, staring at the girl as the pounding of her heart or the gunshots—both—both—reverberated inside her head. There was too much going on for her to focus on a thought, and instead things streamed by her as she watched, the quiet part of her mind prodding her, telling her that this was no more blood than other times, easily drowned by the noise around her.

Lynn’s voice summoned her, and she looked over in time to see part of the girl’s face burst open. For a moment, everything was—was?—silent, the mangled chunks of Lynn’s face merely a pale pink against the shards of bone. Then, the moment was gone, Lynn falling, hitting the floor in a splat of growing red. Keaton barely registered her own voice as she lowered her hands from her ears, reaching, crawling for Lynn, a sear of sharpness grazing her side that she didn’t mind, but which blazed into pain that shot through her side, arms—rib—as she moved, fell, slipped on blood, looked down and tried to distinguish her blood from that of the pool she’d landed in. A hole was visible in her jacket, black against the blue, and the pain forced her to still for a moment, her neck craned. She wouldn’t die of it—not enough blood—did it hurt as much as when she dislocated her kneecap?—Lynn.

She looked back up, but Lynn and Amelia were gone, and she sat there for another moment, her mind blank. Lynn was injured, pale, cold, expended too much energy, needed to get to heat—but she wasnt’t here anymore. Death—coma—healing—answers—

A scream—Eli—prompted her to look back, an ebb of nausea rolling over her as she trembled, shook her hands, scrambled to her feet, the pain beginning to become tolerable—adrenaline—pressure—wouldn’t bleed out, wouldn’t die quickly. She rushed to Eli’s side, looking her over, only somewhat aware of the groans and shallow splashing around her. Leg—calf—can’t walk—not fatal—bleeding.

“W-we need to go,” she said, her voice shaky despite her best efforts to steel herself as she spoke. Her hands trembled, her knees trembled, everything was a bit blurry, doubled—tears—but they needed to go while the gunmen were still reeling from Eli’s attack. “H-help me hold her,” she said, grabbing Eli’s free arm and wrapping it around her neck. Pain lanced through her side, but she squashed it, looking to the girl when she didn’t move. She was younger—a child—scared—frozen—wasting time.

Keaton fixed her with a glare, anger bubbling. “Help. Me.”

The girl was equally—more—trembly than Keaton, but she did as asked, attempting to support part of Eli’s weight by attempting to push up from where her hands were wrapped around the taller girl’s waist. She was barely helping, but her grip left Eli’s other hand free to hold her gun as they maneuvered over bodies. A gunman up ahead shook his head, looking around, and Keaton bit the inside of her mouth.

“Go,” she said, releasing her hold on Eli so the girl’s good foot touched ground again. A glance around and she located a gun—the handle dented—still operational—and she picked it up—pain—staring at the gunman, at how he gripped the gun, how he raised it, cocked it, mirroring what she saw best she could, her power pushing her to lower the hilt of the gun below her collarbone, fully extend her left hand, press the hilt of the gun against her face, slick smearing off against her cheek as she hunched over further. His gun went off, and Keaton’s did too, her head bouncing with the motion, the gun slipping, shifting, the bent side rapping against her cheek and chest with every jolt. Pain seared through her side—bone moved—poking something—and she dropped her arms, breathing, trying to cycle air as she stared at the man she’d shot, who wasn’t dead, was far from dead, was scrambling for his gun. He moved to raise it, and Keaton beat him to it, her power guiding her through the same motions, improving her hold here, her grip there. This time, the man fell, and pain whipped past her shoulder, prompting her to whirl around, adjusting her grip and firing at the man who’d shot. Her side, chest, shoulder all burned, her side the worst, though she was unable to distinguish where each spike of pain came from. Rib definitely poking something—not lung—liver?—muscle?

She backed into a wall, down it, the gun clutched in her hands as she panted, her breaths short, shallow, shaky—hyperventilating—panic attack—deep breaths—each breath more of a gasp than the last, her mouth tasting of blood and metal. Could she fire the gun again? Her whole body burned, her toes cold, wet, numb as her eyes flicked around the scene again. How many gunmen were there? This wasn’t The Promise staff. Arianna then? Someone else?

She slid down the wall, her pants soaking up the blood under her as her eyes flicked to the bloody, lifeless, hollow body of a girl she thought—had seen—architecture class—barely talked to her. Pain and cold were the only feelings as she sat there, the gun in her hands and the girl’s blood-matted hair beside her foot. Her breaths were quick, erratic—trying—not working—blood, nauseating—as she rested her head against the wall, staring at what remained of the welcoming crowd and gunmen.

Archie—Natalie—D's headless body—her eyes picked them out of the crowd—Eli—Amelia—Lynn. And herself—definitely bleeding out—internal—slow and steady. Her heart pounded, though she could only feel it over her breaths.

Archie

---

It was an odd feeling, knowing that you were hurt but being unable to feel the pain.

It felt like fire, but without the burning. Like there was some sort of constricting, irritating force that made his muscles spasm and lose control of his own body. The inability to move on his own was a feeling that had been so deeply ingrained into him from that horrible night. He remembered the gunmetal pressed against his body. It was cold, and he was wet and tired. He hurt so much in so many places that he didn't even know he had. He remembered the look in the eyes of the man who raised him, too. The fear, the dread, the disappointment. His town was small and abode by tradition more than anything else. The way things were was the way they always would be. Parahumans had no place there.

Muscles moved beneath his body's thin layer of skin, the way the bones stretching with every extension of his legs. The snapping of bones echoed and popped, the ripping of his muscles and the blood curdling chokes for air. The gunshots were distant and right in his ears at the same time. He could taste the blood in the air, along with the brass and lead and gunpowder. He felt the explosions rock the floor, and the screams for help. They were so loud, impossibly so. Most of the remaining gunmen had moved into the cafeteria to continue their onslaught, but two remained in the room to finish off survivors. He heard gunfire, and felt impacts against his flank, like spears digging into his scales- a sensation he had only experienced once before. He roared in agony as the transformation completed. An inhuman, primordial sound that raised the hair on people's necks and rattled souls. The giant stretched its newly formed muscles and turned its attention to the remaining Silent Court in the room.

They fired, but he was too big, too fast. On all fours he covered sixty feet in an instant, his enormous muscles carrying him forwards in a desperate flurry of claws and scales and teeth. His massive claws found purchase in the metal floors, leaving enormous, ugly gouges of torn metal and flooring in his wake. The first man had been flattened outright, the primeval monster trampling him under foot. There was a sickening popping and squelching sound as he was reduced to a wet smear on the floor- his torso effectively flattened. The second found himself coming face to face with the jaws of death.

The giant reptile enveloped the terrorist's entire head and shoulders in his maw. There was a muffled scream that was instantly choked as the power of Archie's jaws forced his teeth through skin and bone vice grip. The pressure was immense, and the the pain was unbearable. Like being caught in a giant bear trap that rent flesh and shattered bone. Out of desperation the man failed wildly, kicking and screaming as he struggled to get out and away. The monster was unfazed, and shook the person like a rag doll. Archie couldn't remember much after that, but he remembered feeling his teeth slide shut. He remembered seeing legs and no body, cast in the vapors of half images.

He did remember the explosion, though. Right in his face. The vest, the deadman's switch. The heat hurt, but he could take that. It wasn't hot enough or long enough to breach his scales. But the force? The force rocketed his jaws apart in unnatural ways and sent him- all four thousand pounds of him, reeling back.

He hit the floor next to Eli, the force of his body weight shaking everything around him. He was alive- badly injured, again but alive. His lower jaw had been destroyed, and what was left of the mandible hung limp at odd twisted angles. His upped jaw was mostly intact aside from a spiderweb of burn marks that caked the entirety of his hard palate and throat- of which the skin was torn open where the jaws met his neck. He gurgled, but didn't falter for long. A distant part of him knew that there would be more in the cafeteria. More of the terrorists with guns that could hurt him like they had before. But that part of him was washed away by the pain. Everything with a heartbeat in the room could hurt him. Everything.

He turned his glowing white eyes to the closest living things in the room. Eli, Keaton, and the girl. He roared, his mangled, disheveled face and halfway exposed throat splattering blood and burnt tissue in their general direction.

He would be upon them in an instant.

Cordelia Lynn Holmes

Cordelia Lynn Holmes had many faults but being someone to quit easily was not one of them.

The problem was that the part of her that had picked herself back up off the asphalt, or the power-washed concrete of a prison block, or the carpet of that house - that part of her just couldn't.

She couldn't see. Lynn didn't remember drinking. It was all spinning. Her thoughts wouldn't work. Nothing was working. She hurt. She hurt really bad and she wanted to go to sleep. Somewhere she could hear him scream. Pick me up, Lynn tried to say. I have to get him back to the kitchen. They got them out of the cafeteria so I can blow it up now. Freezer, someone, there's -

Someone was holding something over her head and covering her eye so she couldn't see. "Stop," Lynn tried to pick her hand up off the floor and push them away but it wouldn't move. "Shta," Lynn garbled. She was sweating in her mouth. It was hot, and salty. Lynn coughed - pain lanced through the side of her skull - and ash and blood splattered out. She wheezed, and what she could see out of her eye was dark and swimmy and shifting. "Stop I can't see, I can't..."

I got shot again, Lynn thought. I walked in the room and I got shot, from back behind me, there was supposed to...they were supposed to be there and they weren't, and I got shot in the knee. But Lynn's knee didn't hurt. Nothing in her legs hurt. She was just cold. Lynn was shaking and shivering and couldn't remember why her hair was gone. She was barely able to shift her head. There was a girl over her. Lynn couldn't remember her name. She was swimming. There was something she had to say but she couldn't remember but she knew it was important she had to say it. Where did she get shot? She couldn't walk. Was it her knee? Someone was screaming for help. It's a trap, Lynn thought. You're gonna follow them in the door and you'll get shot.

Keaton, Lynn wondered. Or Elly, or... Lynn blinked. Was Amelia there? Amelia was gone. She'd been gone for a month. There was something she had to tell her before they got shot again. Lynn couldn't remember who her was. "Lizard," Lynn muttered, her brain trying to hold all the thoughts that they were leaking out her skull like cupping sand in her cold shaking hands. Why had she been there? Why did she get shot? She wasn't - "docks," Lynn murmured. "Docks, they're bringing..." Lynn tried to remember. The woods. "Dolls," Lynn said. "Kids at the docks, tell denim, it's...they're...the ghost men are watching but she...know," Lynn tried to pick herself up again but her hurtless legs wouldn't work. She was cold. She was so cold. She was so cold. All of her was shaking and shivering and clammy. Someone had burned half her clothes and all her hair off her. She didn't want to be ugly when she died. The part of her that put brick by brick against the part of her that was afraid and fused it in the kiln of the back of her mind was leaking out onto the floor through Amelia's jacket. "Blanket," Lynn murmured. Her words spiraled slower and quieter. "It's cold. Bring the lizard, he'll get cold, it's cold, lizards and cold they...they slow, you can..." Lynn's eye focused on the figure above her, leaning over her. It was a woman. No. "No," Lynn said. "I had to, you were gonna kill me, you were gonna kill me...I had to, I had to, I had to...you were gonna hurt him, you...you and then those four people and the kid, I lit him on fire, I thought...you shot me, why did you shoot me, I never hurt you, I did everything right...they all sat there and lied about me, I just had to watch...I was gonna get needle...they lied...you shot me..."

Everything was dark now and the slurred mess that spilled out of Lynn's bluing lips matched it. This was cruel. Lynn hadn't done this to her. There was pressure on the side of her head. The freezer. She'd pulled her into the freezer. That's why it was so cold. Lynn had killed her but she hadn't been like this. She didn't blind her. She blinded the kid though. She lit him on fire. She melted the gun in his hands. "I didn't know," Lynn slurred. "Get off my eyes, get off my eyes, get off my eyes, get off my eyes..."

---

Staying upright was getting harder and harder. Eli could feel the blood trickling down her sleeve. It wasn't bad. It wasn't her main concern. It was the growing pool under her leg that worried her. She found herself staring into it, where the edges were getting closer and closer to the blood that flowed much faster from the terrorist. She didn't dare look at his face. She was sure that the same expression of shock remained. His eyes were blank and lifeless. She killed him. He killed plenty of others, and almost herself, but she still killed him. It was an accident, right? She wasn't sure if she'd meant to shoot him or not. Does it matter?

Eli's dazed state was interrupted as she felt a presence at her side. She turned her head, the hand that held the gun twitched, but it was only Keaton. She would have felt relief if it weren't for the gaping hole in her calf. Keaton was here. She was okay, for the most part. Her voice shook- her hands shook as they reached for Eli. Eli could feel her fear, but she was too numb to relate. Keaton told the girl to help and lifted Eli's arm around her shoulders. Eli felt her friend's body tense, and her eyes drifted towards the bloody spot on her denim jacket. She didn't want to move. It was going to hurt. She wanted to sit here with her gun, and wait for The Promise staff to finally come to the rescue.

She didn't protest as the shaky girls lifted her, but as her grazed arm wrapped around the younger girl's shoulder Eli hissed through her teeth. The pain rippled down her shoulder and spine, and joined her dead-weight leg. She heard herself whimper, but her focus was on the gun. She couldn't waste a bullet by a slip of her finger. She also didn't want to shoot Keaton or the girl on accident, or hit another barely-alive student among the bodies. It was just there for the men in masks.

Eli saw the other man in the room regain his senses. I have to kill him too. She thought, but before she could raise the arm that held the weapon, Keaton was gone. Her good leg was shaky, but it did a hell of a better job than the other at the moment. The younger girl looked like she wanted to run. Eli's focus was on Keaton, but she did her best to move with the girl towards the cafeteria. As expected, the pain was much worse moving than sitting still. The girl couldn't hold her up on her own. Eli had to tear her eyes from Keaton's armed figure to focus on walking. If it was even considered walking. Without Keaton's support, Eli was forced to take every other step with her left leg to stay balanced. It took as much strength to put weight on the leg as it did to step over the lifeless students that littered the loading bay.

They were moving too slow. It hurt too much. It took every ounce of Eli's willpower to keep going, even though she could still hear gunfire from the cafeteria. Were they even heading towards safety? Was she leading this girl in the right direction? They were close to the large hallway, but Eli took a moment to look back for Keaton. She'd lost her. The gunman was dead, but Keaton was nowhere to be seen.

That was when she saw Archie...

Eli could see his body writhing. Was he dying? She stopped moving completely, much to the young girl's dismay. The girl was saying something to her, but she didn't hear it. Her eyes were transfixed on Archie's contorting body. She suddenly thought of his heart monitor, which disappeared after the homecoming party. She heard his voice in her mind. Saw his sheepish smile on his innocent face. "I'm Archie. Archie Anderson... The doctors back home said I gots a condition and all."

She knew that heart monitors were only given to those with certain dangerous conditions. What her eyes were seeing now was completely different than what she had in mind. The grotesque scene of flesh that melted off of his body, the bones that threatened to burst from his morphing skin- that wasn't what Eli envisioned. Her eyes widened, her jaw dropped. Every cell in her body was screaming to run, but she was frozen in place. The monster's roar shook their bodies and rang in Eli's ears as the girl next to her shrieked. Eli pushed her away, but her eyes never left the sight before her. "Run," she breathed. She knew that the girl's best chance of survival was to go on without her. Eli heard her terrified whimpers as the girl stumbled across bodies behind her. Towards whatever was waiting them in the cafeteria.

Standing alone now, the monster that took Archie's place distracted by the few Silent Court members that remained, Eli painfully made her way to the wall. Adrenaline fueled every step and hobble it took to get there. Her heartbeat was loud in her chest as she heard the horrible noises behind her. She grunted as she finally rested her shoulder against solid concrete. The weight off of her body was finally off of her leg. She wasn't sure how she was going to move any further. She didn't want to move any further. She needed to find Keaton. Before whatever Archie had become found her first.

"Keaton!!" She shouted over the screaming of the last gunman that remained with them. She could see the lizard shaking his body like a crocodile with its prey. "Keaton, please!" The desperation was clear in her voice.

The explosion rocked the room. She cowered against the wall, her arm coming up to shield her face of the blood and flesh that pelted her side. Every sound was muffled for a few moments, but Eli felt the ground at her feet shudder. As if an earthquake had rattled the station. Eli had to brace herself against the wall to keep from collapsing. She slowly lowered her arm, her eyes squinting into what remained of the room. Keaton... Where's Keaton?

She didn't see Keaton. Her blood went cold. The hairs on the back of her neck rose, and she felt panic seeping into her soul. Archie. He-it laid no more than a few meters away from her. Like a sleeping dragon, his body shifted as he regained his senses. The explosion tore his jaw apart, and Eli looked on with utter terror as she saw his open and bloody maw turn towards her. Her wide eyes met the eyes of a predator. She saw him glance between Keaton, the girl, and herself. She couldn't let him hurt them.

The monster released a garbled roar, spattering blood on Eli's face as she cowered. Bits of charred flesh landed at her feet and bounced against her bloody boot. Eli trembled before the massive beast, and her eyes swelled with tears as she thought of the awkward boy she met in the mall.

"Archie?" She choked, her voice painfully tight.

It lunged towards her, covering ground faster than Eli could ever expect. She could see the intent to kill in it's large eyes. As Eli stared at the face of certain death, she could only think of what used to be her friend. She shut her eyes tightly, doing the only thing she could think of in this moment. Her body cowered, but her mind was acting. She pictured the sweet boy that Archie once was in her mind and projected it into the monster's vision. Her body was shaking, but the picture was clear in both of their heads. She thought of Archie's warmth that night, when he'd been there to hold her while Radvi bled out before them. The monster would feel it too. The blurred vision of Archie's face as he carried her to the hospital. So focused and determined. Of that far away gaze he had on his face when she first spotted him outside of Panda Express.

She wasn't sure if it would help him, or even stop the monster from tearing into her. She just didn't want to die seeing Archie like this. This wasn't him. Not really. Just another unfortunate side effect of the shitty world they lived in. She could hear it drawing close, but no matter how scared she felt, she kept the image of the real Archie in their heads.

"Archie, please."

Nicholas

---

Nic had been by the cafeteria’s exit when the festivities began. As per usual, his head had been so firmly up his own ass that he failed to respond with the efficiency that he should’ve been conditioned to. It obviously would’ve been suicidal to bum rush the armed assailants, so he decided to hold off on that front, even as he heard the wet splotch of red-hot scarlet splashing onto the ground. So he turned his back in favor of a short-term tactical retreat, rushing low to the ground to the kitchen, with the same four legged stance as a rushing weasel.

Once inside, he wasted no time. The kitchen staff screamed, quite reasonably, before they realized that he was not one of the terrorists. They were all low to the ground, hands over their heads, many cuddling up like they were trying to share body heat in an earthquake.

“What’s happening?” one of the kitchen staff asked.

Not feeling particularly chatty, Nic simply snipped, “I’ll give you three guesses” before throwing the cupboards open. “Useless. Useless,” he snapped as he sorted through, shuddering as he heard the continued sound of explosions, screams and gunshots. Some of the people he’d briefly gotten to know last month were there. He wasn’t sure if he’d call any of them friends but that guy, Archie, wasn’t a dick and that was a start. Finally, he found what he was looking for: Peanut oil. Shortly thereafter, he ripped open a bag of sugar, dumping a helping of the oil into it.

“Fire extinguisher: Where is it?” he asked. One of the cowering cooks pointed him in the right direction. “Wonderful. Thank you for not being completely useless,” he condescended unintentionally before offering a small apologetic salute.

At that, he got to work, slathering his mixture on the outside of the extinguisher until it was positively caked. Then, borrowing a lighter from one of the cooks, he set it alight. Stealing a teflon from the supply closet, he rolled the flaming fire extinguisher onto it, having formed an unreasonably heavy, extremely hazardous, sling. At that, he decided that it was time to get his darling little fire retardent grenade the fuck away from him and out of the kitchen.

Creeping out of the kitchen, he had been planning to sneak back towards the front of the melee using the tables as cover. Didn’t work out that way. It was a good plan though. His pa’ always said that “no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.” It appeared that the insurgents had unleashed a were-crocodile upon them.

“No.” Not just upon them. Specifically their dog was about to sic his angel, the one who he’d heard clear as day from across the way at the party last month. “Not happening,” Nic said, swinging his flaming teflon sling towards the creature’s hind leg.

She’s mine, he thought as the steel burst directly behind the creature, having impacted against the tile of the cafeteria, unleashing a burst of scarlet steel shrapnel and pressurized carbon dioxide. An instant later, Nic felt his arm fly back, stinging. Sore from carrying that thing? Doesn’t matter. He took cover behind a table that had found its way onto its side before rubbing his arm down, realizing that he’d evidently caught a piece of shrapnel in his forearm. But if it kept his angel safe, it was well worth it. And if it didn’t, well… fuck. It probably wouldn’t, with his luck. The only thing he was really good at was hurting innocent parahumans.

The were-croc was probably gonna be fine. And he would probably fail to make a meaningful move against the terrorists.

Alright. Let’s look at our little to do list rationally: 1) Remove head from ass. 2) Neutralize were-croc. 3) Neutralize gunmen. 4) Perform first aid on everyone in the goddamn room. 5) Ride off into the sunset with his angel in his arms after she confesses her love for him, on account of how brave he had been. 6) Repeat step one, as needed.

Natalie Ellis

---

---

Natalie turned and watched when she heard the noises. It was just like the first day. Archie was transforming. Natalie grinned, and turned back to the gunman who was shooting at her. Rushing him and then throwing her bullet-ridden shield at him. By the time he had freed himself from his dead fellow's embrace, Natalie was upon him. With one hand, she grabbed his gun and wrenched it from his grasp. With her other, she grabbed his face. And squeezed.

Drenched head to toe in blood, none her own, Natalie was ready to kill more. She looked around the room for any gunmen still standing. She looked just in time to see the bomb go off in Archie's face. There were few, if any, gunmen still standing that she could see, so she wasn't directly in danger of being shot right at this moment. Her adrenaline was receding, and with it, her bloodlust. Now all she could think of was that Archie was hurt. She started to run to him.

She briefly slowed, and felt a wave of relief come over her, when the lizard got up, but that turned to panic when she saw him start to advance on Eli and Keaton. Natalie started sprinting as fast as she could. Worse than letting Archie die, she knew, was letting him succumb to the beast. They'd made promises to protect each other. He'd snapped her out of her frenzy the day of the jailbreak. It was time to return the favor.

Any other attempts to slow Archie down, Natalie didn't notice, but she eventually reached the giant lizard, and took a hold of it's leg, pulling it backwards and away from Eli. She gritted her teeth and resisted any attempt by Archie to continue in the direction it had been going.

Archie

---

Archie, please.

“Look, Archie. You’re never going to know if she likes you unless you tell her how you feel. Be yourself around her. And be confident too. Girls like guys that are sure about how they feel. You just need to show her. Get her alone, somewhere peaceful, tell her that you feel something towards her, and ask her out.”

"You guys must be pretty unlucky, huh? I mean, in your first week you came across a murder. I've been here for four years now and I've never experienced something like that. I hope your friend is okay. She seemed pretty upset when she left."

"Is your hand okay? It looks like you should run it under some cold water."

'Hope you make it tonight! There's plenty of booze and firewood. Let me know if you need help finding the campsite.'

It was a silent cry in the dark of his mind, an minute shard of light in the inky blackness that somehow cut through the fog of his consciousness like a knife. It was small, but it was enough to disconnect him from his adrenaline fueled shellshock.

Archie was too close and far too fast to lay on the brakes now with any effectiveness. In a moment of clarity he threw his massive, tree trunk sized arms upwards to brace himself. He collided with the wall with a thunderclap of force, his enormous clawed hands crumpling steel as he transferred the force of his enormous body into the structure rather into Eli and Keaton's tiny forms. He loomed above them now, blood dripping off his mangled jaw and disappearing with a hiss of heat as soon as it came in contact with skin or the cold metal floor. For a moment, the giant was still.

And then there was an explosion, and he felt his battered body rock away from the sudden concussive force. Most of the shrapnel and other refuse bounced off his thick dermal armor, but some of the larger pieces found their way into his arm- which had come down just besides Keaton in a last ditch effort to protect the two from receiving any collateral damage. He had no respite, though- and felt one of his legs get pulled out and away. He cast a look down and away, finding Natalie feebly pulling at the appendage.

She was strong as an ox, but she only weighed a hundred pounds.

Her grip was unyielding, but the minute amount of added weight meant the giant was completely unimpeded. As she pulled away, he simply lifted his leg, and with little effort pulled it back towards his body. Natalie came with it, and very quickly ended up with her legs and pelvis underneath his enormous foot. The giant shifted his weight, the explosion and sudden intrusion taking over again. He faintly remembered this one's scent. This one had been there before. He pressed downwards- Natalie's thick bones withstanding the force but the thick claws of his feet were digging into her now. Even if they didn't break skin- too much weight on her abdomen and the internal damage would be irreparable.

Archie, please.

He remembered her, though.

He remembered stopping her before she hurt herself at the cafe in the street. He remembered curling around her, holding her close.

Holding her hand.

The giant moaned and shifted its weight again, instantly taking the weight away, but did not remove its foot until Natalie released her grip- or was forced into Archie through some other means.

---

In all his years working on The Promise, never had they had a year quite as... dramatic as this one.

Between the constant trouble that a space station of parahumans caused, the breakout, the apparent presence of an antagonistic individual, and now... this, Gennedy had certainly been busy. Busier that he had anticipated. But a small part of him, the darker side that relished the chance to cut lose for once, was finding a silver lining in the situation. Yes, people were dying. There would be cleanup to organize. Funerals to plan. Miles of red tape and paperwork.

But for just a moment he was twenty years younger and back in security.

It wasn't often he got to use his power. All things considered it was always active, but he never got to do much with it. His years of enforcing were mostly over, and he didn't get to flex any muscle unless there was a very specific situation that demanded his specific skill set. A situation like this, one might say. It was simple, really. The terrorists had thus far been using explosives and firearms exclusively. The staff on The Promise were mostly trained in combating parahumans in nonlethal ways. He was functionally immune to bullets, and he was close by, waiting to be announced as he had been every semester. He could act faster than it would take security to arm properly and arrive once more.

The first gunman had not expected him. They were untrained, evidently. He hadn't checked his corners as he had passed through the cafeteria and into one of the corridors that led to The Promise's main hub. With his non-dominant hand, Gennedy redirected the barrel of the gun away from him. Bullets couldnt pierce him, but a shot to the face would still hurt. He stepped forwards and with his dominant arm he launched a jab into the man's masked face- shattering the ceramic and stunning the terrorist. He pulled his dominant arm down and grabbed the stock of the gun, pulling it out and down while he shoved the the barrel upwards with his off hand. This dislodged the gun from the man's grasp.

Gennedy pulled and stepped back, separating the gun from the man's body. He righted the LMG in his grasp, and fired two shots into the man's chest and head. Holding the gun close to his person, he paced into the door that the terrorist had just left from and into the cafeteria- where the final gunman was checking for survivors. From his position, he could see an overturned table with at least two vaguely familiar individuals huddled behind it. Across the room was the advancing terrorist.

He raised his gun, but he was unfamiliar with the firearm, out of practice, and old. The assailant was none of those things- and quickly managed to get a few shots off on him. What they weren't though, was bulletproof. Gennedy felt the impacts on his leg and upper chest distantly- in the same way that a six foot thick concrete wall felt someone's punch. He grunted, more out of indignation than pain, and raised his own gun in spite of the fact that he was being fired upon.

Breathe in. Aim. Breathe out.

Two shots. One in the chest followed by another in the head.

Silence.

He breathed, but didn't drop the gun in case there were any other gunmen in the area. Holding the gun with his dominant hand, he pulled his radio off of his hip.

"This is Hardin. One down outside, one down inside. We have at least two survivors. Loading bay unknown."

Backup would arrive any second now, now that the cafeteria was secured. Gennedy moved over to the two beside the table. Two girls- the one, Amelia, he recognized. The other not so much. He positioned himself a few feet away from them, towards the edge of the table, and kept his gun trained on the entrances from the loading bay. He glanced to Amelia, taking note of her status, as well as Lynn- who was doing notably worse.

"Help will be here any second now." he said, returning his eyes to the iron sights of the gun. "I'm no good with medical, but I can make sure no one hurts you two again. Just stay with me."